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      Lily James Experiences Beaches a Little Differently Now

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      Voting is underway for the 74th Primetime Emmys, and this week we’re talking to several acting nominees. The awards will be presented on Sept. 12 on NBC.Actors usually talk about the thrill of digging into a role, how excited they are when they crack the code. Lily James does evoke those emotions when asked about channeling Pamela Anderson in the Hulu mini-series “Pam & Tommy,” but there is always a slight shadow.She was scared, she said — and she got a little obsessive. She spent her hours in the makeup chair listening to collections of Anderson interviews and excerpts from shows like “Stacked,” “V.I.P.” and, of course, “Baywatch.”“I was so fricking terrified that I wasn’t going to pull it off,” James, who is British, said in a recent video conversation. (Her accent was one of many transformations she had to undertake for the role.) “I haven’t ever worked harder, just because it needed that.”She did pull it off: Her performance earned both wide praise — The New York Times’s James Poniewozik described it as “sneakily complex” when the show premiered, in February — and James’s first Emmy nomination. (“Pam & Tommy” got 10 nods overall, including one for best limited series.)During a recent video chat, the co-showrunners D.V. DeVincentis and Robert Siegel confirmed James was all in, all the time.“There was no hanging out or gossiping by the food, nothing like that,” DeVincentis, also a writer and executive producer on the show, describing her ethic on set. “If she wasn’t shooting she was always sitting listening to interviews with Pamela Anderson to keep the voice in her head.”“Also just being lovely and cheerful and approachable,” Siegel, who is also the creator, added quickly — lest anybody think James had gone to antisocial, diva-like extremes. “She had so many opportunities where she could have snapped or lost her temper, and it would have been completely forgivable and justified. She never really did.”James, 33, could not have been more cordial when we talked, even though she had to carve out time from her last moments of rest in Tuscany — where she was staying before moving on to Rome to start work on a film by Saverio Costanzo, the Italian director behind the Elena Ferrante adaptation “My Brilliant Friend” on HBO.She had the talking-with-her hands thing nailed already, and she looked relaxed and easygoing, with an excellent of sense of how to still look great on Zoom. She projected an endearing mix of low-key confidence and lighthearted self-deprecation, which included an overly severe assessment of her own interview skills.“I feel I’m really bad talking about work,” she said. “I always remind myself, ‘I’m an actor, so it’s fine, I don’t have to be good at this bit.’”Anderson is yet another step up for James, whose three-season stint as Lady Rose MacClare on “Downton Abbey” lifted her into increasingly high-profile roles — including the younger version of Meryl Streep’s Donna Sheridan in “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” and Ansel Elgort’s girlfriend in Edgar Wright’s stylish, bubble gum action movie “Baby Driver.”It wasn’t the first time she had played a historical person, though Churchill’s wartime secretary, Elizabeth Layton, who died in 2007, was in no position to nitpick the way James portrayed her in the period drama “Darkest Hour,” from 2017. Both title characters in “Pam & Tommy,” on the other hand, are very much alive.Lily James, left and Sebastian Stan as Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, whose stolen and leaked sex tape become a tabloid phenomenon in the 1990s. Erin Simkin/HuluOne of the few moments of hesitation during our conversation came when I asked whether she had ever met Anderson — who was not involved in the series and let it be known afterward that she had not checked it out.“Still nothing,” James said, “and I totally respect that. That’s her choice. It’s a bizarre thing because I’ve played her, and I feel so attached but …” She drifted off. “I hope that if she was ever to watch it, she would feel that the show was just so behind her.”To break away from it all, James enjoys being in nature, away from people and cities. “When you see the perspective of the ocean and the horizon in front of you, you’re like, ‘Oh, this is all OK,’” she said.But asked whether she was still able to chill on beaches — or whether they now triggered visions involving rescue cans and slow-motion running — she flashed back to shooting a big “Baywatch” scene in “Pam & Tommy.”“That one is going to go down in my life as one of the craziest days,” she said, shaking her head. “There were paparazzi wading into the sea, taking pictures of me — and I’m someone that never likes to be photographed in my bikini, let alone in Pamela Anderson’s red bathing suit.”That suit is now an integral part of the 1990s cultural landscape. And if “Pam & Tommy” has achieved one thing, it’s to make us reconsider Anderson’s role in it, particularly the early part of her marriage to the Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee (Sebastian Stan, who was also nominated for an Emmy), when the couple’s sex tape was stolen and found its way on the marketplace.Lee came out of the scandal fairly unscathed — rockers gonna rock — but Anderson was relentlessly mocked and vilified. “The show is about looking at our culpability as a human being, our lack of empathy,” James said. “The responsibility of how the show would be received weighed heavily on me, so I really couldn’t let it go, and I didn’t film for a long time afterwards.”“I didn’t feel able to,” she added. “I found myself still speaking in an American accent.”You can’t let yourself disappear in someone else’s life and psyche — and physical appearance — the way James did without being affected. “Pam & Tommy” may have felt like a bit of a lark on paper, but it led to some soul-searching.“It’s made me want to keep going and shoot for really challenging roles,” James said, adding, “I felt like I needed some sort of change in my career and this was it, a sort of crossroads.” More

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      Trevor Noah on Liz Cheney’s ‘Bigly’ Loss

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      Noah said her defeat in a primary was “the chance for Wyoming Republicans to declare whether they stood with Liz Cheney or with Donald Trump, and they answered bigly.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Ch-ch-ch-changesRepresentative Liz Cheney lost her re-election bid in the Wyoming Republican primary on Tuesday.On Wednesday’s “Daily Show,” Trevor Noah said her loss was “the chance for Wyoming Republicans to declare whether they stood with Liz Cheney or with Donald Trump, and they answered bigly.”“The reason everyone was watching this race is because Liz Cheney was running for re-election and of course, Liz Cheney has been the most prominent anti-Trump Republican in Congress. She voted to impeach him; she’s led the committee investigating him. Basically she just will not stop talking about that one time he tried to overthrow the American democracy. That was like, like a million years ago, lady, move on!” — TREVOR NOAH“Trump was so excited he threw a ticker-tape parade made out of classified documents.” — JIMMY FALLON“But the Liz Cheney story isn’t over yet because she’s vowed that she will still do anything to stop Trump from becoming president again, even possibly running against him in the Republican primary. Yeah. And look, I mean we must admit it is probably is a long shot, but don’t forget she is a Cheney, and if there is one thing they’re committed to, it’s regime change.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (Quiet Quitting Edition)“You know how everyone’s been talking about ‘the great resignation’ where people are just like leaving their jobs after the pandemic? Well, if you hate your job and fear confrontation, there’s a new thing called ‘quiet quitting.’ That’s when people emotionally and mentally check out at work and do as little as possible without getting fired. We already have a term for that — it’s called your 30s.” — NICOLE BYER, guest host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live”“Yeah, that’s right, people are quiet quitting. They’re just going to their jobs and doing the job from 9 to 5 and then, and then hold up, that’s just working. That’s work.” — TREVOR NOAH“People in this country are so obsessed with work. Guys, your job is just a place you go to avoid seeing your family, all right? It doesn’t need to be the most important part of your existence. If your job is from 9 to 5, that means the work messages should stop at 5, too. Yeah, that’s right — any message after 5 is basically a booty call. If your boss texts you at 7:45 to see if you filed an expense report, it should start with ‘Hey, you up?’” — TREVOR NOAH“Bottom line, you need to establish a work-life balance, so remember, if you hate your job, make sure you also hate your life.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Bits Worth WatchingDemi Lovato joined Jimmy Fallon for his monologue when she co-hosted Wednesday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightMartin Short, an Emmy nominee, will pop by Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutIn Neal Baer’s living room, from left: “Las Reinas de la Noche, 5” (1995) and “Las Reinas de la Noche, 8” (1993-95), both by Reynaldo Rivera; and a triptych by Joey Terrill, “In the Middle of It All” (1992-93).Photograph by Blaine Davis. Terrill: Courtesy of the artist and Ortuzar Projects, New YorkCollectors like Neal Baer are resurrecting the forgotten art of the AIDS era. More

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      ‘Better Call Saul’: Jonathan Banks Says Goodbye to Mike

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      Killed off in “Breaking Bad,” Mike Ehrmantraut had a long second act in “Better Call Saul.” Banks said playing Mike made him “a little more silent, a little less rambunctious.”This article contains spoilers for the series finale of “Better Call Saul.”“With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come,” Shakespeare once wrote. The sentiment has rarely applied to Mike Ehrmantraut, the cantankerous fixer and hit man in the Albuquerque underworld of “Better Call Saul” and “Breaking Bad.”Morally conflicted, with plenty of wrinkles but little mirth, Ehrmantraut was mostly a blunt, coldblooded crank — with a soft spot for his granddaughter — in “Breaking Bad,” arriving in the second season and getting killed off three seasons later. But over the six-season run of “Better Call Saul,” which ended on Monday night, the creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould fleshed out a nuanced back story for the character, expanding him into a figure caught between the weight of his own guilt and the desire to protect what is left of his family.Jonathan Banks, who played Ehrmantraut, is no stranger to the pressure of survival, having grown up in a tough neighborhood just north of Washington, D.C. After refining his theater chops in high school and college, Banks began a long film and television career, with roles in movies like “Airplane!,” “Beverly Hills Cop” and the 2017 Netflix film “Mudbound.” But the role of Ehrmantraut has been a defining feather in his cap after decades of solid journeyman parts, earning him five Emmy nominations to go along with one he got for the CBS drama “Wiseguy” in the late 1980s.Banks can be as blunt and direct as the character, albeit with a bit more mirth. Over the course of two conversations this month, he discussed the changes the role has brought in his own life and whether he really did all those crossword puzzles. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.Have you seen the finale?I haven’t seen it. But I know what it is. The last scene that Bob Odenkirk and I had together in the desert, and where I say to him, “You regret nothing?” — Mike was still looking for the humanity in this guy. He had just spent all those days in the desert. He’d also been impressed that this guy had been able to pull it together and survive.So that is a long-winded way of saying that, were Mike living when Jimmy went to jail and fessed up to everything — I wonder, would Mike have been surprised? It might not have taken him by total surprise that the guy finally had a conscience.You started playing Mike in 2009. Is there anything from your own life that informed these different layers we have seen in him over the years?I used, partially, people that I grew up with, people that I feared or respected. You know, it always sounds a little too dramatic to me when somebody says, “My neighborhood, I grew up this way; it was tough.” Suffice to say, I grew up not in the garden district. There was a fair amount of rough life. Certainly nothing in the order of “Breaking Bad” or the cartel life, but it was enough that it got your attention. There were a lot of days you walked around afraid — or at least I did.I got banged around quite a bit, got punched in the mouth a lot. It gives you a certain amount of, I don’t know that it gives you toughness, but it leaves no surprises when all of a sudden you’re in a fight or you get beaten or whatever. As far as Vietnam, the sniper part of Mike’s life: I have several close friends that went. And one of my friends they just put into Arlington Cemetery about a month and a half ago. There are a lot of guys that came back that I know that were hurt badly by their experience in combat. That’s something I never experienced — I borrowed from people that I saw.Banks and Bryan Cranston in “Breaking Bad.” Mike arrived in Season 2 and was killed three seasons later.Ursula Coyote/AMCI watched the conversations that you and Mark Margolis [who played Hector Salamanca] had as part of a series of actors’ talks for “Better Call Saul”; I got the impression in some of your comments about being a working actor that Mike’s inability to suffer fools is something that you share.I like to be straightforward. I like to be honest. I don’t like pretense. And I try not to be condescending or pretentious. I like just simple honesty. And honesty is not so simple.What about all the crossword puzzles? How good were you at them before you started playing Mike?Terrible, really terrible. In the Sunday comics, there is “find the six differences in between two photos or two drawings.” I have difficulty with that. I’ll tell you who is great at the crossword puzzles, who sits down and just “boom,” is Michael McKean.You had to do a lot of pretty grueling physical work for this role. Was there anything that was just beyond the pale?No. I mean, I’ll never let Vince Gilligan up for air when he puts me in the desert at 110 degrees every day. But I get to break his chops forever! It’s wonderful. [Laughs.] And I’ve got to tell you, that desert — the early morning sunrises or the sunsets, or when the thunderstorms would come across that New Mexico desert, or the wild horses would run by? Oh my god. I wouldn’t have missed that for the world.At any point did your relationship with the role turn into a feeling of ownership?Yes. Mike is mine. Mike is mine. I caught myself almost for a moment choking up when you asked that. And I think the honest thing to say is if I really think about it, maybe Mike has changed Johnny, too.I think Jonathan Banks, by playing Mike, became a little more silent, a little less rambunctious. And by silent, I mean, I think I listen a little more than I did 12, 13 years ago. I don’t like to use the word witness, but that’s what’s coming to mind. I think he possibly affected me in that I’m a little more patient. Maybe that comes with age anyway.Was there ever a time where you got a script and thought, “Mike wouldn’t do this”?There have been moments that I went, “Oh, I think Mike wouldn’t do that.” But I found, quite honestly, a lot of the times that what the writers were telling me, if I deferred to them, it made sense.The first thing that comes to my mind is in “Breaking Bad” when Mike left his granddaughter in the park and had to escape. And I was going, “No, Mikey would never leave his granddaughter.” And of course, the reasoning is, the police department — they’re there in the park. They will take care of her, they will return her to her mother. I still have a tough time with Mike leaving his granddaughter in the park.There’s a scene in “Better Call Saul” last season where Mike is reading “The Little Prince” to his granddaughter, Kaylee. It’s a passage where the little prince says, “My flower is ephemeral, and she has only four thorns to defend herself against the world.” What do you think this scene means for Mike?I love that scene so much. I love “The Little Prince” so much. It’s a life lesson for that child, obviously, what he’s reading. But as I remember, it touches a lot of chords in Mike as well.Which chords?[Long pause.] Innocence. Innocence protection. And the solace of relaxing, just for a moment. I mean, there’s two things going on — not only the book but her. In spite of all his fears and trepidations, the world is good for a moment with that innocent child and that innocent book.There are two different worlds. And part of his misery is that he can read “The Little Prince” with Kaylee, and then he’s going to go do something that he knows is not good. It’s one of the reasons he despises himself, because he knows better. There are a lot of these characters that don’t know better, or if they do know better they’re not aware of it. Mike is very aware of what he’s doing and knows it is not good.Banks and Juliet Donenfeld in “Better Call Saul.” Mike reserved a soft spot for his granddaughter, Kaylee.Warrick Page/AMCMike is one of the few people in this story who sees himself and others clearly, and that comes through in his relationships with the various other characters, good and bad.He lost his soul when he was responsible for his son’s death. What he tries to get back — and what I’ve also said is his Achilles’ heel — is that he doesn’t want to see people get involved and get hurt. He’ll see the good in somebody, and it usually costs him. Those lines that you well know: “If you’re in the game, you’re in the game.” Mike has no compassion for that once you’re in it.You know, to talk about bad guys, to admire miserable characters — since man could open his mouth and tell a story, it’s gone on. I have a quote in my kitchen — I’m going to take you over here with me so I can read this to you. [Carries laptop across the kitchen] Here we go: It says, “Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.” Mark Twain. [Laughs.]In the final episode, though, the last scene made me think that the overarching theme within the whole “Breaking Bad” universe — even with Walter White — is that no matter how bad someone goes, love can bring them back to some kind of better place. Do you think that aspect can apply in real life, that somebody can be redeemed by love?Yes, because then they are no longer lying to themselves. They’re trying to turn around, even if it’s only momentarily — even if it’s five seconds before you die. When you’re a little kid, you need a Popsicle, and you’re trying to figure out how to lie, how to get it any way you can. As an adult, hopefully, at some point it hits you that you mustn’t lie. You got to put your head on the pillow at night and go to sleep. Don’t lie to your wife, don’t lie to your friends, don’t lie to yourself. That sounds pretty trite, but I believe it. I truly believe it. More

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      As She-Hulk, Tatiana Maslany Is Beautiful When She’s Angry

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      The “Orphan Black” actor described the giant, green protagonist of “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” as “weirdly, the closest thing to my own experience I’ve done ever.”She-Hulk was born in 1980, in a comic titled “The Savage She-Hulk.” Endowed with superstrength and a sensational blowout, she stood 6-foot-7 in her bare, green feet and taller in heels. She had biceps like cantaloupes, skin like a cocktail olive, the waist-to-hip ratio of a lingerie model. Could she smash? Could she ever.As the latest Marvel character to bound from page to screen, she makes her television debut in “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law,” a loopy half-hour comedy that arrives on Disney+ on Thursday. The series stars Tatiana Maslany, the Emmy-winning actress best-known for the critics’ darling clone thriller “Orphan Black,” who has also starred in demanding stage roles and a handful of indie films. Maslany described the character She-Hulk — giant, verdant — as “weirdly, the closest thing to my own experience I’ve done ever.”This was on a recent, sultry Wednesday morning, when New York City felt like the inside of a steamer basket. Maslany, 36, who had recently flown in from Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband, the actor Brendan Hines, had suggested walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. She commuted this way just about every day, usually by bike, when she appeared on Broadway in Ivo van Hove’s version of “Network.” The trip calmed her, giving her a channel for her restlessness and intensity, and helped her find her way into a role on the way there and back out on the way home.“The energy that it requires to be open in front of people just is really hard for me to modulate,” she said, as she sidestepped some sun-melted chocolate. “At the same time, it’s quite an alive place to be.”Maslany pulses with that aliveness in person, which manifests in playfulness, attention, intensity. Without the benefit of C.G.I., she stands 15 inches shorter than She-Hulk. She’s a flick knife of a woman — small, sharp. She showed me a tattoo on her arm, a random drawing of an infant that her husband had done.“It’s a little tough baby,” she said approvingly.That morning, she had dressed in yellow cycling shorts and a T-shirt with a picture of a dirt bike on it, and her curly half-blond hair was arranged half up, half down. Kid-sister chic. No one seemed to recognize her on the bridge — a tribute, maybe, to her ability to disappear into character. In “Orphan Black,” she played a dozen clones who were differentiated by hair and makeup, but also by Maslany’s extraordinary plasticity of affect and expression. And while Hollywood sets certain expectations for how actresses should look and behave, she has rarely bowed to them, onscreen or off.“I’ve never played the bombshell,” she said.She-Hulk “fulfills the stereotypical feminine ideal body, while still being, like, too tall and green,” Maslany said.Marvel Studios/Disney+But She-Hulk is a bombshell. She is also the alter ego of Jennifer Walters, a meek public interest attorney with a listless dating life and a passion for workplace separates. When Jen receives an accidental transfusion from her cousin Bruce Banner (Marvel’s original Hulk, played by Mark Ruffalo) she suddenly becomes She-Hulk. While Bruce’s Hulk is a cinder block of a man — or as Maslany put it, “a roided-out gym maniac, to such a cartoonish degree” — Jen’s transformation, triggered by anger, looks different. Only some muscles bulge. Her breasts — not muscles! — bulge, too. Her waist whittles. Her hair straightens.“She fulfills the stereotypical feminine ideal body, while still being, like, too tall and green,” Maslany said. (This was not lost on viewers of the “She-Hulk” trailer, who criticized the character’s voluptuous proportions.)Despite sometimes playing four clones in a single scene, Maslany has never transformed in quite this way. And if she knows she looks good in green, it’s because she once dressed up as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle at Comic-Con. But she gets what it’s like to have the world suddenly see you differently. And if she doesn’t understand her talent as a superpower, her colleagues do.Explore the Marvel Cinematic UniverseThe popular franchise of superhero films and TV series continues to expand.‘She-Hulk: Attorney at Law’: Tatiana Maslany described the giant, green character making her television debut on Disney+ as “weirdly, the closest thing to my own experience I’ve done ever.”‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’: The trailer for the long-awaited sequel was unveiled at Comic-Con International in San Diego. The film will be released on Nov. 11.‘Thor: Love and Thunder’: The fourth “Thor” movie in 11 years, directed by Taika Waititi, embraces wholesale self-parody and is sillier than any of its predecessors.‘Ms. Marvel’: This Disney+ series introduces a new character: Kamala Khan, a Muslim high schooler in Jersey City who is mysteriously granted superpowers.“She has so many superpowers,” said Jessica Gao, who wrote “She-Hulk.”Raised in a medium-size town in Saskatchewan, Maslany was never that interested in fame. “There was, like, absolute flying in the opposite direction, doing everything to not end up there,” she said. She loved acting. She was less enthusiastic about the accouterments of celebrity. At one point I referred to a fashion shoot she had done.“I’m getting better at it,” she said, making a face.“I didn’t want to do anything of that scale ever,” Maslany said of superhero shows. “But there was something about the script that felt really weird and funny.”Amy Harrity for The New York TimesBut she did become reasonably famous. So Jennifer’s resistance to becoming She-Hulk — “The idea of being a superhero is not appealing to me,” Jennifer said — resonated with her. Maslany didn’t have to imagine how she would feel if she became a public figure practically overnight, if she were scrutinized for her appearance and affect.“It’s a very easy jump for me,” she said.On the red carpet and in media appearances, she plays a role to make it through. “It has to be another character, or else it costs me too much,” she said.This helps to explain why an actress who would have sworn that she would never do something as mainstream as a superhero show signed on. “I didn’t want to do anything of that scale ever,” she said. “But there was something about the script that felt really weird and funny in a way that was like, Oh, I don’t know why, but it’s undeniable to me.” (Actually, she did deny it, in at least one interview, but she explained that as a contractual matter: She couldn’t announce it until Disney announced it first.)The move surprised Helen Shaver, a director who worked with Maslany on “Orphan Black.” But it didn’t surprise her for long. “I was like, OK, that’s a wild choice,” Shaver said on a recent call. “But I also know she has this playful, wacky element to her as well. She is willing to abandon herself to madcap humor.”The shoot began in the spring of 2021, in Atlanta. As Jennifer, Maslany played a version of herself, though she noted that she has never worn more makeup to play a supposedly mousy character. (“I’m truly wearing full lashes,” she said. “I’m contoured to hell. The story around Jen being undesirable is absurd.”) And because Jen retains her consciousness even in superhero form, She-Hulk is a version of her, too — though one achieved almost entirely by digital effects.Maslany plays Jennifer Walters, a public interest attorney, as well as her C.G.I.-enhanced alter ego.Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel StudiosWhen She-Hulk appears at her sexiest, Maslany is slinking around the set in a silver motion capture suit and a helmet. “I feel like a little kid in pajamas,” she said.Yet Ginger Gonzaga, who plays Nikki, Jen’s spirited paralegal, could always tell whom she was acting opposite. “When she’s She-Hulk, she has this physicality that instantly changes, and it happens very fast,” Gonzaga said. “It’s a proud stance and a statuesque stance.”Maslany described She-Hulk’s bearing as heavier, less fidgety, more centered in the pelvis. “The weight of She-Hulk brings her down into her loins in a different way,” she said. This might be the way a woman moved if she felt safe in the world, if she knew that no one could hurt her.But “She-Hulk” suggests a further fantasy, one that has nothing to do with irradiated blood and is arguably even more incredible that the sci-fi imaginings of “Orphan Black.” This new show suggests that a woman could be angry, and that the world would really like it.I asked Maslany about the last time she felt angry. “It’s never not there,” she said. But she rarely allows herself to express it in her personal life. And it never looks as good on her — “I would love to be able to be angry, but not, like, shaking and crying,” she said — as it does on She-Hulk.“She transforms into a hyper beautiful, hyper feminine version that might be more palatable in that anger,” Maslany marveled as she stepped off the bridge and into the muddle of Manhattan. “It’s wild. It’s super wild.” More

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      Al Franken Becomes First Former U.S. Senator to Host ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’

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      “But tonight is not about politics, it’s about comedy and having fun,” he said. “So, who’s here from out of state to get an abortion?”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.May I Be Frank?Al Franken returned to his late-night comedy roots on Tuesday, becoming the first former U.S. senator to guest-host “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” “But tonight is not about politics, it’s about comedy and having fun,” he said. “So, who’s here from out of state to get an abortion?”“Today, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which is a huge achievement. It makes the single biggest investment in addressing climate change ever. While I’m here, I — I really should talk about some of the other existential threats facing our nation: the enormous gaps in wealth and income, the threats to our democracy. But I really think one of the most serious issues facing our country today is just how big a [expletive] Ted Cruz is.” — AL FRANKENFranken also commented on the F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago.“Now, some are saying Trump could be a flight risk, which is crazy that the former president of the United States is a flight risk. But the good news is that at least Donald Trump’s official presidential portrait is back up at every airport in the United States.” — AL FRANKEN“You know, there has never been a better time to visit Palm Beach because for the rest of the summer, Mar-a-Lago is running a special weekend getaway package that includes free breakfast, a room upgrade where available, and a nuclear secret of your choosing.” — AL FRANKENThe Punchiest Punchlines (Inflation Reduction Act Edition)“Well, guys, today President Biden returned from his vacation in South Carolina and signed the historic Inflation Reduction Act into law. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah, things have been going pretty great for Biden. He may not have gotten the first impression rose, but he’s working his way towards an invite to the fantasy suite.” — JIMMY FALLON“It does everything. It subsidizes electric cars. It funds wind and solar energy. And it changes the name of summer to ‘extra spring.’ Hopefully, Mother Nature falls for that one.” — TREVOR NOAH“Right after he signed the bill, Biden was like, ‘What are those strange sounds?’ and a staffer was like, ‘That’s applause, sir.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Trump heard, and was like, ‘You’ll definitely want to sneak that one home when you leave office.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingWilliam Shatner narrated the “Daily Showography” of Elon Musk on Tuesday.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe comedian Nicole Byer will kick off two nights of guest-hosting “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Wednesday.Also, Check This OutSolange Knowles at the David H. Koch Theater, where her first score for a ballet company will premiere at New York City Ballet in September.Rahim FortuneSolange Knowles will compose her first ballet score for the Fall Fashion Gala at New York City Ballet in September. More

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      Searching for Leonardo da Vinci in ‘Leonardo’

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      Our critic finds that a new biopic series on the CW prefers contemporary clichés to exploring what actually made the artist fascinating.Leonardo da Vinci discovered how to capture life in his drawings. And he found new ways to topple a castle. But the one thing he could never come up with was a good recipe for shampoo.That, at least, is the main message I took away from the eight episodes of “Leonardo,” a biopic series premiering on Tuesday on the CW. Following in the footsteps of “The Lord of the Rings” and “Game of Thrones,” the makers of “Leonardo” seem to have decided that old-time heroes need to have greasy locks.But then, “Leonardo” seems so indebted to “Game of Thrones” that it could hardly have gone its own way on grooming. Its music riffs on “GoT,” complete with drumbeats and a twinkly harp, and it includes gratuitous nudity and a pointless beheading. Think of it as a “CSI”-style spinoff — “GoT: Florence.” It shows how deeply our sense of history is essentially aesthetic, even pictorial: Our understanding of the past is based on the fantasies and images our own culture has already built up about that past — greasy hair and all — rather than on any real historical thinking. And that means we reject the true foreignness of history in favor of the comforting stories we’ve told ourselves about it, all rooted in today’s reality — or in Westeros, which is much the same thing.Despite its debt to “Game of Thrones” fantasy, “Leonardo” has the backbone of a 21st-century police procedural. The first episode, and then each one that follows, begins with its hero in prison for murder. As the artist (played by Aidan Turner) is interrogated by a Renaissance cop named Stefano Giraldi (Freddie Highmore, who, I’m glad to say, was permitted to wash his hair), flashbacks reveal how the artist ended up in such straits. Spoiler alert: In the final episode, when Leonardo is about to be hanged for the crime, we and Giraldi discover that he did not do the deed. Viewers who didn’t see that twist coming ought to have their Wi-Fi revoked.The series will most likely get away with the platitudes of its invented plot, since most viewers will probably be watching “Leonardo” less for its storytelling than for a glimpse of a certain Renaissance genius who, though dead for half a millennium, has become one of our current art stars. (It helps that his “Salvator Mundi” sold for $450 million in 2017.) But even though “Leonardo” is set in Italy around 1500 and purports to talk about a real man, this program’s grasp on history is as weak as any dragon drama.The murder plot is pure fiction, but that’s forgivable: Today’s biopics aren’t expected to stick to the facts. Watching “Rocketman,” we didn’t think that Elton John could really float above his piano. What I can’t forgive is the false picture “Leonardo” paints of Leonardo. As played by Turner (“The Hobbit,” “Poldark”), the artist seems a neurotic heartthrob with attention deficit disorder. In reality, Leonardo’s genius was systematic in the extreme: He’d take the time to understand and portray every hair on a woman’s head, every twig and leaf on a tree.Giorgio Vasari, the great Renaissance biographer, described Leonardo as a charming conversationalist, a deeply courtly being “whose personal beauty could not be exaggerated, whose every movement was grace itself” — a man “filled with a lofty and delicate spirit.” In “Leonardo,” he comes closer to Kurt Cobain. It’s as though, here in the 21st century, we have a single model for what creativity might look like, and the creators of “Leonardo” don’t dare ask us to imagine another one. I guess they could be right: We might be so completely stuck in our own times that we simply can’t inhabit the past’s deeply different realities. Or maybe history could offer an example of progress we might want to see.Matilda De Angelis as Caterina da Cremona, an invented character with whom Leonardo has an all-but-sexual romance.Angelo Turetta/Sony Pictures TelevisionThis biopic series could have moved in that direction when it came to the artist’s sexuality. Even though Leonardo da Vinci is one of the earliest gay creators we know of, “Leonardo” has him drawn most powerfully to women. Sure, the series shows him kissing a man or two, but the entire plot is built around his stormy, steamy, all-but-sexual romance with an invented character named Caterina da Cremona, played by Matilda De Angelis. (She’s the one we keep seeing naked for no reason.) In the 21st century, not to play one of history’s famously gay figures as notably gay seems borderline homophobic. “She was love,” says Leonardo about his invented girlfriend. Why not let us hear this gay artist say, “He?”When it comes to capturing the past’s foreignness, the show even misses little details it should have been easy to get right. Rather than drawing with a goose quill, Leonardo uses a metal nib — which only came into use centuries later. Candles, a pricey commodity in the Renaissance, burn by the dozen in every room, as though Leonardo had a side hustle in aromatherapy. (Maybe his vanilla-cinnamon pillars made Mona Lisa smile.) When he paints his “Last Supper,” the show breaks away to a computer-generated animation of how perspective works in the painting — then gets that perspective wrong.About halfway through the series, I took off my art critic’s hat, abandoned my interest in seeing yesterdays that are different from now, and tried pretending the show wasn’t about any real artist at all, let alone a gay one from the Renaissance. What if I changed the title from “Leonardo” to “Tony”? Would that help me enjoy it?Not much.Since the plot of “Tony” — sorry, “Leonardo” — is just an excuse for telling the story of a great artist’s life, the writers, Frank Spotnitz, Steve Thompson and Gabbie Asher, never bother giving it any real momentum or patching its holes. And since this is, again, the story of a great artist’s life, they make sure to stuff it full of every “great artist” cliché they can find: “A man like Leonardo — his genius is forged by pain,” says one typical line of dialogue. “And that pain can drive a man to commit terrible acts.” Leonardo van Gogh, you might call him — a hybrid creature that doesn’t even reflect how real artists think and act today, let alone how they did in the Renaissance. It’s a screenwriter’s fantasy of how old-time artists ought to be.In “Leonardo,” a Renaissance master tells his pupil, “You’ve drawn only what you saw. You must learn to draw what you feel.” That’s a bromide born centuries after Leonardo’s day — drawing “only what you see” was actually one of his most radical inventions — but it’s not clear we have much appetite for understanding how cultural foundations can change over time.To grasp how and why art got made in the past, we might need to unlearn our current ideas about artists. And you can’t blame “Leonardo” for not even trying. We’re all just so addicted to the dirty hair. More

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      How John DeMarsico Made SNY’s Broadcasts Go Viral

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      SNY already had some of the best announcers in baseball. John DeMarsico, the network’s director, has made every game feel like a trip to the movies.On a sticky August evening at Citi Field, toward the end of a crucial Mets victory against division rival Atlanta, closer Edwin Díaz threw his last warm-up pitch and began his long, familiar journey from the right field bullpen to the mound for the top of the ninth inning. But something unusual happened: The television broadcast did not cut to a commercial.Instead, the camera trailed behind Díaz as he walked through the bullpen door, broke into a jog and traversed the outfield grass. The trumpets of “Narco,” Díaz’s beloved entrance song, were fed from the stadium public address system directly into the broadcast, making fans at home feel like they were watching it all happen in person. Or maybe that they were in a bullfighting arena in Spain. Regardless, there were chills.The broadcasting flourish was designed and executed by John DeMarsico, 35, the game director for SNY, the Mets’ regional sports network.“We’d covered him coming in before, but we never blew off a commercial break to show the whole thing,” DeMarsico said. “And we’d never sent the camera crew down there to do the dramatic, from-behind shot. I had it in my back pocket all year, and I was waiting for the right game to do it.”That same game had featured Jacob deGrom’s return to Citi Field after more than a year lost to serious arm and shoulder injuries. DeMarsico gave deGrom, the Mets’ co-ace, his own star moment, skipping an ad break to show his first-inning warm-up pitches. That time, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man” piped into the broadcast.John DeMarsico has created several viral moments this season with directorial choices during Mets broadcasts on SNY.Michelle Farsi for The New York TimesIn both cases, the embellishments had been discussed earlier in the season but were decided upon in the moment, with DeMarsico feeling the mood in the stadium and improvising a cinematic response.Regional sports networks take their share of abuse, with complaints of streaming blackouts from fans and Major League Baseball’s frequent attempts to build its audience through other alternatives, be it Apple TV+; NBC’s Peacock streaming service; or other platforms. But in a medium that seems antiquated to some, SNY’s theme all year has been innovation.In this case, the network is building on what was already a strength. The chemistry of the network’s broadcast team — the play-by-play announcer Gary Cohen and the analysts Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez — has long made SNY destination viewing, even when the team on the field sometimes didn’t command that level of attention.“The team has always been experimental,” said Darling, who, along with Cohen and Hernandez, has held court over broadcasts full of goofy tangents, movie recommendations, and inside jokes that have been going since 2006. Darling sees their interactions as a sign of respect for the viewer. “I think there’s a fear with some broadcasts that don’t trust their fan base to be intelligent enough to see something different. A lot of broadcast teams are fearful of alienating their core fans who will criticize anything outside of the ordinary, especially when criticism in today’s world is so instantaneous.”Keith Hernandez, Ron Darling and Gary Cohen keep things casual in the booth with guests like the comedian Jerry Seinfeld.Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images For NetflixAs the comedian Jerry Seinfeld said on one of his many trips to the booth, “It’s a TV show, it’s not just a game.”DeMarsico, with the producer Gregg Picker’s support, has quietly been helping the visuals of their broadcasts catch up to the quality and innovation of the narration. And like a crafty reliever, he has done it with a formidable bag of tricks.He uses unusual camera angles, forgoing the typical center-field shot at crucial moments, instead filming the action from behind the right-fielder or near the visitor’s on-deck circle.He employs split-screens to highlight confrontations between pitcher and batter. In a tense at-bat between Díaz and Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Christian Yelich earlier this season, DeMarsico began the shot with Díaz’s face in the left side of the frame. He then faded in Yelich’s face on the right side, gradually having Díaz disappear. Fans had a chance to truly see the pitcher and the batter staring each other down.DeMarsico understood that Jacob deGrom’s return was something special. Capturing his warm-ups was turned into art.Michelle Farsi for The New York TimesThese techniques are attempts to tease out the drama that already exists in the game but had previously been difficult to visualize.“Baseball is inherently cinematic, more so than other sports,” DeMarsico said. “In football and basketball, there’s so much speed. In baseball, there is no clock. The geography of the field is very structured. You’re able to set the scene, and establish the confrontations between batter and pitcher like a duel in a western.”After decades of baseball games looking nearly identical from network to network, these shots can feel bracingly original.For DeMarsico, it is a natural collision of his two passions: baseball and film. Before beginning his SNY career with an internship in 2009, he studied film at North Carolina State University. Conversations about his work are peppered with the names of directors, both famous and obscure. He models his methods of creating suspense on the work of Brian De Palma, and cites Martin Scorsese’s famous tracking shot at the Copacabana in “Goodfellas” as his inspiration for the Díaz bullpen moment. He also cites Nicolas Winding Refn — the Díaz-Yelich moment was inspired by Refn’s 2009 Viking epic “Valhalla Rising” — and Sergio Corbucci, who directed some of the most violent spaghetti westerns.While the concepts of SNY’s viral moments were discussed in advance, they were deployed in the moment by DeMarsico. Michelle Farsi for The New York TimesIn Saturday night’s win over the Philadelphia Phillies, DeMarsico repeated the Díaz bullpen shot, but this time began it in black and white, and then moved to color when the pitcher stepped onto the field, a clear nod to “The Wizard of Oz.”Then there’s Quentin Tarantino, who influenced perhaps the most lighthearted of DeMarsico’s innovations: the “Kill Bill” filter. The Mets lead the majors in hit batsmen this year, and Showalter’s escalating irritation has been a running joke among Mets fans. The broadcast team ran with it, using the same effect employed by Tarantino in the “Kill Bill” films whenever their protagonist’s thirst for vengeance is triggered: a red tint, a sound known as the “Ironside Siren,” and a double exposure of her face and a memory of the traumatic event.DeMarsico used the sound and color a few times, but knew something was still missing. So he had his crew put together a montage of the most egregious hit-by-pitches this year and overlaid it on Showalter’s face, implying that the manager was reexperiencing a season’s worth of insults each time a Met got plunked.Some baseball purists might object to such shenanigans, but it is certainly drawing attention to the network. The clip of Díaz’s entrance went viral and has now been viewed on Twitter more than 8 million times.How games are shot for regional sports networks has rarely been a hot topic. That has changed with SNY this season.Michelle Farsi for The New York TimesFor a sport that has long battled traditionalism in its effort to attract younger fans, these innovations may come across as avant-garde. But they could also give something of a road map for how baseball could modernize its other broadcasts — a process that began almost immediately when Apple TV+ recreated the Díaz entrance, nearly shot for shot, in its presentation of a Mets game.But with the Mets on pace for more than 100 wins this regular season, and DeMarsico at the helm of their broadcasts, a little competition is nothing to worry about. “I still have a few tricks up my sleeve,” he said.That type of confidence could explain why the SNY production team has been given such wide leeway to experiment, even sacrificing some advertising dollars along the way to do it.“It’s not something we want to do a lot because the commercials obviously pay the bills,” DeMarsico said of the times they stayed with the action on the field. “But there’s a trust factor with SNY. We pick our spots and choose wisely, and as long as it doesn’t become an everyday thing, we can do things like that and make moments that are special for the folks at home.”He grinned and added: “Maybe 8 million views is worth a commercial break.”The Mets are on pace for more than 100 wins this season. DeMarsico still has some tricks up his sleeve for the stretch run.Michelle Farsi for The New York Times More

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      Guest Host Desus Nice Breaks Down Trump’s Excuses on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’

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      “He says the F.B.I. planted fake evidence to frame him, and now he wants them to return the fake evidence,” Nice said. “Even O.J. is like, ‘Yo, bro, you wildin.’”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Not-So-Safe KeepingDesus Nice, the former co-host of Showtime’s “Desus & Mero” guest hosted “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Monday, where the topic was the F.B.I.’s search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.“He’s like a racist Jason Bourne, but more orange,” Nice said of Trump.“Trump says the documents the F.B.I. took from Mar-a-Lago are covered by his white privilege — wait, excuse me, I mean his executive privilege.” — DESUS NICE“They also confiscated 8,000 McRibs, nine Melania clones, one never-been-used Peloton, two tons of industrial-grade ranch dressing, ‘Girls Gone Wild’ volumes 8 through 19 — ay, yo! — Lindsey Graham’s testicles.” — DESUS NICE“Let me just break down Trump’s defense: He says the F.B.I. planted fake evidence to frame him, and now he wants them to return the fake evidence. Even O.J. is like, ‘Yo, bro, you wildin.’” — DESUS NICE“Here’s the thing Donald Trump doesn’t understand: He doesn’t own those documents. They belong to his former employer, the United States government. See, that’s not how jobs work. When you get fired from an office, you don’t get to take the Xerox machine home with you. When I got fired from Showtime, they didn’t let me bring home the cast of ‘Shameless.’” — DESUS NICE“And people are saying, ‘What’s the big deal about a president keeping classified documents at his house?’ Because his house is a golf resort! It has a seafood buffet on Wednesday nights. Come on. This is like if Obama left the nuclear codes at Red Lobster.” — DESUS NICEThe Punchiest Punchlines (Top Secret Edition)“Over the weekend, we found out that the F.B.I. seized 11 sets of classified documents from Trump’s home, including four sets that were marked ‘Top Secret.’ You know Trump just kept those hoping to come across KFC’s secret blend.” — JIMMY FALLON“Also, just a thought, but if the government doesn’t want people reading those files, maybe they shouldn’t label them ‘Top Secret.’ It’s like a guy labeling a porn folder on his computer, ‘Best Porn.’ Call it banana bread recipe. No one will open it.” — JIMMY FALLON“The government should do what we do: Just put secrets in a folder called ‘Taxes 2012-2017.’ Yeah, I have done that my whole life. The only screwup was, I did this when I was 12 years old, and then my mother was like, ‘What taxes are you paying when you’re 12?’ And then she busted me for porn and tax evasion.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Bits Worth WatchingThe singer-songwriter Em Beihold made her television debut on Monday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightSterling K. Brown will appear on Tuesday’s “Daily Show.”Also, Check This OutAfter John Turturro, left, was cast in “Severance,” he suggested Christopher Walken for a role.Wilson Webb/Apple TV+Christopher Walken and John Turturro drew on their years of friendship for their Emmy-nominated roles in “Severance.” More